Aleksandr Antonovich Lyakhovskiy Working Paper pp

Parchamists were forced to hide or emigrate. Personnel appointments started to be made on the basis of personal 

loyalty to Amin. The recommendations of Soviet officials to stop such acts were ignored. What is more, the new 

PDPA general aecretary tried to shift the responsibility for his illegal acts onto the Soviet side, declaring that these 

steps were supposedly undertaken on the recommendation of Soviet leaders. It is possible that by this Amin wanted to 

“obligate” his benefactors even more but he had crossed the permissible limit. 

 

 

The CPSU CC repeatedly appealed to the Afghan leadership, trying to stop the repressions and calling for the 

rule of law. Having studied the tactics of Soviet leaders well, Amin gave assurances about the cessation of lawlessness 

and hypocritically stressed his friendly attitude toward the USSR. In the process he justified his actions by our own 

postulate – everything is moral which benefits the Revolution. Amin said more than once: “We have ten thousand 

feudal lords. We eliminated them and the problem was solved. The Afghans recognize only force.” And he was as 

good as his word. 

 

 

The US charge d’affairs reported to the State Department:  

We have been observing for 18 months how this Marxist party (the PDPA) has been destroying 

itself…By way of illustration: if you take the list of ministers who were confirmed in April 1978 

there have been 25 changes among them. The number of changes among deputy ministers is even 

greater – 34. One purge follows another and it is difficult to imagine how the regime manages to 

survive. Part of the answer to this question is, of course, the brutal repression of the identified 

opposition. The number of murdered political prisoners has evidently reached 6,000 but the number 

of those held in political prisons and who have been imprisoned in them is possibly four times this 

number…

2

 

 

However, in spite of brutal measures the zone controlled by the PDPA regime did not increase and even 

shrunk. At this time more than 80 percent of Afghan territory where ten million people lived was outside the control of 

central authority, which held the cities and largest population centers. The opposition controlled practically all rural 

areas and to some degree major road and transport routes. As a result, when the authorities’ reforms were carried out 

they considered neither the specific nature of the “tribal zones” nor their semi-autonomous status and in a number of 

places the Pushtun tribes revolted. The Mohammedzai, Barakzai, Alkazai, and the Jadran tribes, traditionally hostile to 

central authority, took an irreconcilable position toward the PDPA regime. Several influential people in the tribes who 

were not very religious saw an opportunity in the weakening of central authority to strengthen their positions among 

their fellow tribesmen, settle accounts with other tribes, and, finally, “line their pockets” with shipments of weapons, 

goods, and narcotics. 

 

 

Amin warned a number of tribal authorities about responsibilities, having announced strict measures of 

punishment for resistance to the authorities from fines to the death penalty. But when this did not produce an effect he 

ordered that regular troops and air strikes be used against rebellious tribes; this caused part of the tribes to cross over to 

Pakistani territory, which contributed to outbreak of the refugee problem. In response to criticism from Soviet advisers 

as to how he could bomb entire tribes, he quietly replied, “You don’t know our people! If any tribe takes up arms it 

will not lay them down. The only solution is to destroy them all, from big to small! Such are our traditions.”  

 

 

Several days after Taraki’s murder General Ivan Pavlovskiy called Soviet Defense Minister Dimitri Ustinov 

and reported that his group had completed their assignments.  The defense minister was interested in how the situation 

in Afghanistan was developing after Amin came to power. Pavlovskiy characterized the situation in the army as stable 

and noted that with suitable work its fighting effectiveness could be raised to a level allowing it to deal with the 

opposition. In response Ustinov told Pavlovskiy he had not analyzed it at all – comrades Yurii Andropov, the KGB 

chairman, and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had other information. When General Pavlovskiy asked permission 

to return to Moscow Ustinov thought for a long time and then said, “Return on 3 November.” 

 

 

On 3 November the USSR Ambassador in Kabul, Aleksandr Puzanov, informed Amin about the Soviet 

leadership’s readiness to receive him in Moscow and about its “satisfaction with the steps taken by the Afghan 

leadership in the area of Party and nation building.” Before Puzanov left he visited Amin and again expressed 

satisfaction with DRA. 

                                            

2

 Spetsial’nyy byulleten’ Instituta Vostokovedeniya AN SSSR [Special Bulletin of the USSR Academy of Science 

Institute of Oriental Studes] No 5, pp. 135-136. “Nauka”, 1986. 

 

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The Soviet leadership decided to exploit a favorable situation, counting on the fact that the Americans were 

most concerned on how to solve the problems in Iran where Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution had overthrown 

the Shah and, on November 4, the US embassy in Tehran was seized and would not stand in the way of our actions in 

Afghanistan. The idea appeared of creating conditions to remove Amin and replacing him with a more loyal figure 

since he was not reliable and was capable at any moment of realigning himself toward the West. This is what was 

feared most of all – the changes in policy in Egypt, Chile, and Somalia in an anti-Soviet direction were still fresh in 

Moscow’s mind…And here again “evidence” “surfaced” about his purported association with the CIA; that is, every 

basis was present for doubt. 

 

 

At a symposium organized by the Norwegian Nobel Institute in September 1995, in reply to my question, 

“Was Hafizullah Amin an agent of the CIA?” former CIA director Stansfield Turner replied: “I have heard many times 

about Amin’s ties with the CIA and the US. I ought to say that they ascribe more things to us than we were able to do. 

Afghanistan was not a first priority problem for us; we had many more other problems. And even today we have 

limited interest in it.” 

 

LYAKHOVSKY: “…As Valentin Ivanovich [Varennikov] has just said, our leadership found itself faced with a 

question [after Amin overthrew Taraki in September 1979]:  what to do now?  It was decide[d] to leave it as it was for 

the time being—to accept the facts, even though, as I have said, they did not trust Amin.  They did not trust him 

because there were reports that he was a CIA agent.  I am not going to prove or disprove it, because there are some 

secondary facts that speak for it, and some that speak against it.  For instance, in 1977, when Khalq and Parcham were 

getting united—even before the April [1978] revolution—Amin was not elected to the Politburo because everyone 

opposed him.  [He] was accused of cooperating with the CIA during his study in the United States.  He admitted that 

he was ‘playing’ with the CIA because he needed money to continue his studies; but he said it was nothing serious, 

‘just playing.’  There is a transcript of a meeting with Ulyanovsky, where he talks about this[.]  Karen Nersesovich 

[Brutents] has this document. 

 

…After Amin had killed Taraki, the attitude of our leadership to him changed.  Our leadership was afraid that 

Amin might be cooperating with the CIA, and, observing his turn to the Americans and the Pakistanis, was worried 

that he might abandon us.  And at the same time Amin continued his ministry of Socialist slogans.  So we were 

worried that we might find ourselves in a situation when we would be in Afghanistan, and the Afghan leader would be 

pro-American, but still using Socialist rhetoric.  In other words, he would be disguised as a socialist; but he would not 

be ‘our man.’” 

 

Later, Turner responded: 

 

 

“I have heard many descriptions of possible relationships between Amin and the CIA, and of the United 

States and its designs on Afghanistan.  I would like to start with a view that Leonid [Shebarshin] and I share: that 

people in our business are often accused of doing all kinds of things we never have the capability of doing.  And I 

would refer to the comment Gary [Sick] made earlier that when the Shah approached us to do something undercover 

with respect to Afghanistan, we turned our back on that.  I would suggest to you that while this conference is on 

Afghanistan, if you put it in the context of 1978 and early 1979. Afghanistan was not very high on the American 

foreign policy agenda.  We are focusing on it entirely here.  We had lots of other things that were of much greater 

concern to us… 

 

As far as the CIA and it[s] relations with Amin are concerned, I would ask you to step back and recognize 

that starting in 1976-1975, actually—covert actions—undercover activities like this—were in bad repute in the United 

States—as was the CIA—as a result of the Church committee hearings, which roundly criticized past activities of the 

CIA.  As far back as 1974, our Congress had passed a law saying that any time we were going to undertake one of 

these dirty tricks or covert action campaigns, the President must approve it and must inform the Congress.  When I got 

there in 1977, there was no strong inclination on the part of the Carter administration to exercise covert activities.  But, 

interestingly…the CIA itself was running very scared having had this considerable criticism, and was reluctant, even 

in the case of Afghanistan after the invasion, to get involved in a major covert activity that might backfire and lead to 

another Church Committee investigation, and another series of criticisms of the CIA….” 

 

Marshall Shulman, formerly an advisor on Soviet affairs to Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, added: 

 

 

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